


The New Spirit

by rocketball



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Bolin kinda sucks too, F/F, Gen, Jinora is the best, Jinora's big adventure, Korrasami background romance, Mako is high key the worst, Meelo is a demon, Tenzin is just a good dad doing his best, Toph would never create the police but here we are
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:08:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25722613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rocketball/pseuds/rocketball
Summary: After the fall of Amon, the United Republic is in unrest, people are going missing, including Mako and the police. The world is stuck in nighttime and it's up to Jinora, Korra, and Tenzin to figure it out.
Relationships: Korra/Asami Sato
Comments: 1
Kudos: 10





	1. Chapter 1

I ran back from my favorite place on my family’s island just as snow was starting to fall. I jumped silently through my bedroom window so Meelo wouldn’t hear me from his room and tell on me like the little narc he was. Ikki, the good sibling, covered for me by pretending to play with me in our room and promised not to tell Mom or Dad I was out. 

I slipped into our bed next to Ikki who was fast asleep and looked out at the full moon. Snow was falling more heavily now which was becoming normal even though it was late summer. 

Ever since Korra defeated Amon, the weather had been acting like Meelo on one of his fits, unpredictable and violent. I liked it though; I felt like something was coming, a surge of some kind in the world. My parents didn’t share my sense of wonder. They passed each other worried glances before Dad left for work in the morning and got back late into dinner, exhausted from Republic City.

The weather wasn’t the only thing that had changed since Amon’s defeat, some people were going missing, too. It was hard to keep track though, who was missing and who was just going on vacation. Hordes of people – those who could afford it – packed up a suitcase and left to one of the other cities in the United Republic. Most went to the Hu Xin Provinces, which Dad said was causing real problems for their city leaders but wouldn’t tell me why. Benders and non-benders alike had grown wary of the city’s politics and law enforcement and needed a break. And not to mention Aunt Lin’s police force went to help out at the Provinces a couple weeks ago but still hasn’t gotten back. Dad didn’t tell me what they were doing there, either.

Korra said they were missing, but Mom told me not to worry about that. She also told me not to worry about the rumors Asami brought in with her weekly visits that crime would surge. Mom was right, a sort of chilling quiet had spread through the city since the metal benders had vanished, and it felt both calm and tense. No one seemed to know what the near or distant future would hold for our city, but we could all feel the impending change.

My life hadn’t changed much since Amon’s rise and defeat. I babysat Ikki and Meelo a little more and saw Dad and Korra a little less as they helped cover for Lin, but my mornings and afternoons were still filled with meditation and air scooter races, and my view across the water of Republic City’s skyline stayed jagged and vibrant, washing out the stars above my family’s island.

I looked out the window at the flakes gathering on the grass and decided sleep could wait a little longer. The snow was calling too loudly for me to ignore. I needed to go outside and feel the snow swirl around my hair, hear the flakes shuffle around my ears as I air bended them into different shapes. I felt a newness in the air, like it was filled with possibilities, like when Rohan joined our family. 

I carefully lifted the covers to not to disturb Ikki and lifted the air under my feet to carry my body through the window.

The grass looked like a giant baker had dusted some powdered sugar on her island cake. I spun the falling snowflakes into a funnel, catching more flakes, until I had enough to make a snowball the size of my fist. I built a snowwoman the size of my new baby brother Rohan and set it down in front of my window to surprise Ikki with in the morning. 

I hopped into my room to fetch one of my old doll’s hats and scarves for the snowwoman to wear and adjusted it on its head a little slanted like Korra would sometimes wear, when I noticed the figure looked off. It looked like it had dirt mixed into its head even though the snow never touched the ground. My snowwoman was gray. 

I looked up and saw that the snow on the ground in front of me was discolored not by the city lights across the water and not by the full moon, but that it was falling gray like it was mixed with ash.

I flew back inside my room and slammed the window shut, too distracted to worry about waking Ikki. I had heard Grandma Katara tell stories of when she was only a couple years older than me and she was travelling with Grandpa Aang to the North Pole. Before telegrams the only notice they had that the Fire Nation was attacking was the snow that fell from the sky mixed with ash from their ships.

I jumped over my bed and saw that Ikki was still fast asleep which worried me because she was a light sleeper. I ran to my mom’s room expecting to find her looking out the window cradling my younger brother Rohan, but found them both tucked in bed, tiny snores coming from his mouth, the dotted moonlight striping Mom’s face.

She didn’t stir when I whispered her name, but she had been a heavy sleeper since Meelo.

“Mom!” I tried again, my voice pitched high with worry, but neither Mom nor Rohan moved an inch. I stepped closer to the bed and shook Mom’s shoulders, a heat filling my neck and a clearness in my ears. 

I sent a wave of air through the room, disturbing the paintings of the air temples on the walls, making the bison-hair-woven blankets my parents had pulled out a few weeks ago flutter, but Mom and Rohan stayed sleeping. I looked outside at the grass disappearing quickly under the snow and knew I couldn’t wait for Dad to come home. I felt a pull from somewhere to act, so I left a note on Mom’s night table, checked on Ikki one last time, and air scootered to the city to find my dad. 

***

The snow stopped in the middle of the bridge. It seemed to only be falling on our island, which didn’t make sense. I didn’t think the fire nation was attacking my family’s island, or that they would attack anyone, but I was still worried. I scootered faster.

I knew where I’d find him even before I had scootered off the bridge, zipping past stores, restaurants, and banks, mostly empty at the late hour. I didn’t know how I knew he would be at Asami’s company’s warehouse, only feeling the warm presence of people I knew calling to me like no other building did. I could hear the voices ripping through the air, bouncing off the damp cobblestones, skipping to my ears from a hundred feet away, as clear as if I were already in the warehouse with them. I could feel the different notes of frustration and confusion each voice emanated, toward each other but more so at the world, and I knew they were all oblivious to my listening in.

“-is missing without a trace. I would’ve called Lin but… thank you for coming, I didn’t know what else to do,” came Asami’s tired voice.

“Your missing Sato mobile could have gone the same way as the police force,” said Korra, determined.

“You think they’re actually missing?”

“I think it’s weird that we haven’t heard from Mako in two weeks.”

“Oh, that’s not that weird,” Asami mumbled. “We are his exes.”

“Well still, something’s going on and I don’t want you to get caught up in it. We’ll figure out who took your car and make sure you get it back.”

“Thank you Korra, I know one theft isn’t a priority right now with everything going on-”

Korra put her hand on Asami’s arm and said softly, “You are my first priority, and I’ll keep you safe from whatever mysterious force is gaining power.”

“You really think it could be an evil spirit?” Asami asked in a hushed tone.

Dad cleared his throat. “Don’t worry Asami, we have everything under control, and there are no spirits in Republic City.” Tenzin said, cutting off their increasingly private moment. “We better be going – Korra.” 

Dad recognized the sound of my scooter and turned to see me come in. “Jinora! What are you doing here?” he asked.

I let my air scooter dissipate into the gray factory air. “Mom won’t wake up,” I said, feeling strangely calm. “And it’s snowing ash on our island!” I didn’t mention that I could hear their conversation from streets away. 

“Are you sure? Why didn’t you wait for me at home?” he asked, slightly annoyed, like I was Ikki interrupting his meditation to air plunge the toilet after Meelo used it.

I ignored his questions. “My air bending feels different, too, like the air is quiet and still. I think a spirit might be doing something.”

“Jinora, there are no spirits in Republic City,” Dad told me a little too firmly, like he was trying to convince himself instead of me.

Korra grabbed my shoulders and asked me, “what about the snow?” her gaze fierce and awake.

“Look outside!” I said, yanking Korra’s wrist through the metal doorway, Dad and Asami following reluctantly but quickly behind.

Across the water gray snow was falling only on our island, not on Republic City, like my home was encased in an invisible murky snow globe. We only took in the strange sight for a moment before a familiar flash of red scampered toward us through the street.

“Pabu!” Korra gasped, stepping past us, letting the ferret jump up into her arms and crawl shivering, onto her shoulder. 

***

Dad shut the factory doors and pulled his radio from his pocket to contact General Iroh, then President Raiko when the line wouldn’t go through. He dropped his radio on the cold floor when no one from any of the other cities in the United Forces picked up his signal. Dad became tense with a knowledge no one was prepared to ask him about. I could feel the air around him almost solidify with indecision.

The only other time I’d seen him act like this was when Korra was kidnapped a few months ago by Amon, but I wasn’t allowed to come with him then so I only heard that she was gone and not what he was going to do. I’d felt scared and helpless like I hadn’t felt since I was learning how to go through the upright paddles and had no older siblings to guide me, only Dad. 

But he had helped Korra return to us then. I had no doubt whatever was happening would be solved soon, by him and by Korra. No one was in danger, at least not any danger that we could see. No one would want to hurt Mom; the worst she’d ever done to anyone was make me watch Meelo after he ate sugar. She was just sleeping peacefully. So was Ikki.

Whatever was causing what was happening was probably freezing our island so that we would sleep through it safely. Except for me. I was left awake and I didn’t know if it was out of punishment or mercy.

I looked at the radio on the floor and could feel a buzzing in the air around it. I could tell by the way Dad was pacing back and forth that he wouldn’t notice if I picked it up and shoved it in my pocket. 

I tried to give my mind some rest while the adults figured out a plan, because I had a feeling I wouldn’t just be going back to bed anytime soon, so I sat on the factory floor, first warming the stone with a whirlpool between the ceiling and the floor, and mediated, keeping several small whirlpools going around the room. I kept my eyes closed, feeling the spot where each one was, and making them grow and shrink to the rhythm of Mom’s favorite song on her wind chime album. Grandma Katara said the way I air bended reminded her of an old technique she employed to water bend during the Hundred Year War; something about octopus tentacles. 

I had figured out how to use the air to make things warmer when I was playing hide and seek and scooter with Ikki and Meelo, and I discovered a secret tomb underground, which was my favorite place on our island. It was where I was before I noticed the snow. The room was wide, and the ceilings were tall and inlaid with carvings of different spirits and old monks. From a distance they looked like the work of a child, but when I air scootered up to get a closer look, I discovered the lines of detail that filled every inch of space on their faces. 

The air up there creeped me out with how alive it felt. It moved out of my control and swished my hair around my neck. It was a good thing I brought my physics book Grandma Katara got me for my birthday, because it was extremely cold and Ikki didn’t find me, so I got a chance to read about the natural sciences and discover a trick for cold spaces. Even though I had never met a spirit, this is how I imagined it felt to be in their presence. It’s what I felt in the air around the radio.

I didn’t know if Dad knew about that trick because I stopped telling him about my discoveries when I started to detect a seed of annoyance in his voice when he would tell me, “excellent work Jinora! Can you show me?”

Dad stopped his pacing and looked across the room at Asami who was teaching Korra something about her cars. I had never ridden in one of those – Dad always said it was more important to use air bending to get places, because it was important that I be the best I can be – but sometimes I wanted to feel the air like non benders feel it, blowing their hair back, out of their control.

“Korra, I’m going to go to my house to get the talisman of Guru Pathik. I use it to open my chakras. I think I can use it to open up the city, perhaps unstick whatever is jamming the signals in the air,” Dad said to her, a faint blush on his cheeks only I noticed. Korra and Asami didn’t understand how Dad thought using an object to open his chakras was cheating.

“Is that that small carving that looks like a pacifier? Made of tan stone on the shelf above your bed?” I asked him. If it was, I didn’t want to think about Dad touching it. I had caught Meelo shoving it up his nose whenever Mom and Dad were out.

He nodded, barely shifting his focus from Korra. “Let’s go,” he said. He started to make an air scooter big enough for him, Korra, and me, but Asami interrupted.

“Take my car,” she offered. “It’s loaded with weapons. It’ll be faster, and you never know what you might run into.”

Korra stepped closely to Asami. “Stay safe,” she said intensely then hugged her.

Dad didn’t argue with Asami. It was important that we were prepared for anything. None of us knew what was happening or whether there was a ticking clock already set in motion by some unknown malevolent force. 

Dad started the engine and I pulled Korra into the backseat with me. I wanted to talk to her. I kept my whirlpools spinning around me at a close distance, my finger spinning in circles tucked in my pocket, spinning around the radio antenna. A soft hum flittered my fingernail and passed through my body to my mind’s eye. I could see the shadow of a dark figure, projected on a brick wall like the buildings we were driving by. A deep and familiar voice was calling me, not by name but by spirit. I couldn’t quite make out what it was trying to say. 

A chittering to the left ripped me out of my daze. Pabu was still curled up on Korra’s shoulder, shaking. He looked like he’d been running through alleys for weeks. His fur was matted and gray and his jaw was moving around on something like Oogi when Meelo would climb inside his mouth, so I stopped the air in front of his nose so that he’d spit it out. A soggy crumpled up piece of paper fell into my palm. I air bended it clean and unfolded it.

Dear Mako, it said¸ I hope you’re doing okay, wherever you are. I’m doing fantastic! I met this nice guy named Varrick who’s broken me into the acting business. I met this amazing girl, I can’t wait for you to meet her, she has red hair and a beautiful face, her name’s Stacey, or Nancy, or something like that. I act with her in what Varrick’s calling a Mover. You’re going to love it when you come back. I hope that’s soon. I miss you big bro. The Fire Ferrets aren’t the same without you, and Korra quit too. Korra said you’re missing, but if you ask me, she just wishes you were. I know you’re really doing detective work with the force on assignment in the Hu Xin Provinces even if I don’t know which exact building you’re working in. Or sleeping in. They must be almost done borrowing your Mako-the-greatest-detective-and-big-brother-ever services by now. Come home soon, okay? I’m sorry for how things ended. Love, Bolin.

At the mention of Korra’s name, the buzzing from the radio sent a tiny shock to my stomach. Whatever was happening to the radio signals, I didn’t think it had anything to do with blocked chakras. The air felt wide open to me.

I showed the letter to Korra. Her eyes opened wide as she read it, gripping the sides of the page tightly in her manicured fingers, her eyes whipping back and forth, looking for Mako between the lines. 

She folded the paper up in her palm, tucked it in her sleeve, and stared at the back of Dad’s head. The tires were starting to feel sticky from the snow, so I wiped them clean every few rotations so we could keep going forward. It wasn’t enough to distract me from getting information.

Luckily, Asami’s car was a convertible and Dad was in too much of a hurry to put the top up. “Do you think he’s missing?” I asked Korra.

“I don’t know,” she said hesitantly.

I pressed on. “Have you heard from Aunt Lin? You’ve tried to contact her, right?”

“Yes, Tenzin – your Dad – says that she’s probably just swamped, though, with all the investigations and missing people.”

“Is that what you think?”

“I’m sure she’s fine.”

“Why would so many people go missing anyway? And why in the Hu Xin Provinces? What’s going on there?”

She looked down at me, snow melting gray in her brown hair. “Amon didn’t just do damage to Republic City. He had followers all over the United Republic – still does,” she looked out across the water to our island. We were still the only car in the street.

“But how are they helping?” I didn’t understand. None of the adults were giving me straight answers.

“I don’t know. Lin said that she got a call from Raiko for extra help down there. Mako didn’t tell me that he’d be going with them, only that he was looking for something he couldn’t find here, not that he would’ve told me anything.”

“So Mako could be missing.”

She didn’t say anything, just kept scratching Pabu’s paw.

“We should look for him. If Pabu can’t find him then he might be in trouble.” I told her. I felt sorry for her. She looked so lost without Asami next to her.

She looked down at me again with pity furrowed into her brow which meant I could expect a condescending brush off. “I’m sure he’s fine. He can take care of himself,” she smiled. 

I remembered a conversation I heard a week after Aunt Lin’s police went to the Hu Xin Provinces between Korra and Asami. Asami had been giving Korra lessons about technology and was dropping her off afterwards. They were talking about Mako, laughing about what a weird boyfriend he was. Asami wasn’t worried about why they hadn’t heard from him, she said he was probably wrapped up in finding his precious answers. Korra laughed with her, agreeing that he cared more about mysteries than relationships, but there was an edge of worry to her voice. 

“I’m sure Bolin would like to know where his brother is,” I said, a little pricklier than I meant to. 

“You’re probably right.”

A sudden jerk from the front wheels startled my whirlpools out and snapped my focus back to the current problem. Mom wasn’t waking up; I was the only child left awake, and now the car was spinning out on the bridge which had iced over. 

Korra quickly melted the bridge with a stream of fire and Dad yanked the steering wheel back into position, but only a couple seconds of smooth driving passed before the wheels caught on a thin layer of ice again. The air didn’t feel cold enough for that to happen. It felt like the bridge didn’t want us to cross it.

Before the car could spin us off the bridge and plunge us down fifty feet into the icy current below, Korra pulled water up from the river and encased the frame of the car in ice, stabilizing us. We jumped out of the car onto the slippery road and air scootered behind Korra who was fire bending a safe path for us. 

“Asami’s going to kill me!” Korra yelled on our air scooter.

“She’ll just be glad you’re safe,” Dad said awkwardly, absently patting her shoulder.

Behind us, the dashed yellow lines dividing the road disappeared under a thick, crackling layer of ice. A sound like Oogi flapping his tail over a pile of bricks came from the middle of the bridge right as our feet reached crunchy grass. It had cracked and crumbled into the river, taking Asami’s Sato mobile with it. Large splinters of bridge caught the light of the full moon as they sunk deep under the water.

The path to our house was slippery with black ice and I had to catch myself with air multiple times when I slipped. We were all too stunned to guess why this was happening.


	2. Chapter 2

The front door caught a little on the snow building up in front of it as we wiped our feet, careful not to track any inside. The hallway was still bright with moonlight and our steps were muffled by the carpet. Any other night I would’ve been worried about waking Meelo, but tonight I hoped for his ear twisting cries. 

Dad led us into his room, not even offering Korra tea, and touched all of Mom and Rohan’s chakra points. Unsurprisingly, he said nothing and made to retrieve his Meelo-contaminated talisman, causing my note, unread by Mom, to flutter the floor.

“Here it is,” Dad said, holding up the artifact. “I think if I go to the tallest point in the house, I can use the energy to transfer and open up the air on this island.”

“You think that’ll work?” Korra asked. “You think that’s what’s happening? That the chakras are closed?”

“I don’t know,” he said then sighed, “but what else could it be?”

“Anything else,” Korra said quietly, her eyes glued to the carpet where Rohan’s teething toy sat.

Dad pretended to not hear her as he ran up to the roof, leaving her words swirling around the floor like fallen leaves waiting to be crunched under foot.

I silently agreed with Korra, but I didn’t see the point in arguing with Dad and killing any hope he had. I let him carry out his plan and hoped that he would come up with a better one on the way. There were no chakras in the air. Only people had them, everyone knew that. 

And then it hit me, that if Dad was deluding himself so much to forget his answers to Ikki’s never ending Sunday morning meditation questions, then he really was at a loss for a plan, and if he didn’t have a plan, then what would happen to our family? For the first time, I was scared that Dad couldn’t fix this, Korra and I might have to figure it out, but I didn’t know if he was ready to hear that. 

I whooshed the note I left for Mom on the floor to my hand, for something to hold onto while Dad flew to the roof to meditate with the artifact, or perhaps I wanted something to tear into pieces while Korra stood next to me, both of us helpless and silent. 

I looked down at the note in my palm and noticed something that jerked my attention back to the present. It was different. Still in my handwriting, but the words were all jumbled and broken, like a lemur bat had taken over my body and tried to replicate English.

Reading the words made me dizzy, so I walked to the couch and picked up the radio, barely aware of what I was doing. With the radio in my right hand and the note in my left, the letters swam around the page while my ears rang with a whine higher than Meelo’s worst cries, until my vision finally focused and I heard – no felt – a message that finally made sense to me. The radio - or maybe the note - or maybe the moon was telling me something crucial, and I knew it was only for me, not Korra, or even Dad. It said, Jinora, go to the tomb.

I yanked Korra by the wrist before she could think to stop me and ran outside to the winding downhill path that led to the tomb I had found years ago, where I had been only an hour ago. I distantly heard her voice yelling for Dad to follow behind, then his feet kicking up the snow as he chased us.

Dad pushed past us once we got to the entrance. He looked sharply back at me and said, “Jinora, I told you not to come here anymore!” But his tone lost its rigidity as he looked through the opening toward the high ceilings. 

He walked inside, slowly, then Korra followed. When she stepped inside, I could hear the air at the top, the air between all the carvings, start to sing. It was a thin, low sound, like insects sped up with a computer. It didn’t sound like this the last time I was here.

I followed her, then stopped just inside when my hands flew to cover my ears. The ringing from a few moments ago was back and louder. I squeezed my eyes shut, the intensity of the noise overtaking my body, spreading through every vein with its pulsating crawl. I took a few broken steps then dropped to my knees. The radio in my pocket burned through my clothes with its electricity, so I yanked it out and set it on the ground in the center of the room. The relief of silence enveloped me as I blacked out.  
***  
Flakes of snow prickled the back of my neck as they drifted in through the tomb’s entrance. The only sounds were the humming in the air, and the ragged breathing of Dad and Korra standing above me. I opened my eyes and saw their worried faces, then looked past them to the ones carved into the ceiling wearing unreadable expressions, distant in space and emotion. 

What was that awful noise? It had felt like the stone was screaming out in pain, or trying desperately to be heard by someone, for some reason I couldn’t fathom. Why was my favorite place in distress? And why did it call me to it only to make me black out? If that even was the tomb calling me, I didn’t know. 

Something was scratching at my palm and I looked down to see my hand clenched around something I must’ve been terrified to let go of when I fainted, because my fingernails were digging into my skin and it took me a moment to remember how to relax my grip. I unfolded the note and almost passed out again as the foreign words rearranged themselves on the page. 

Before I could attempt to make sense of the note again and worry too much about what I’d do about it, Korra and Dad lifted me to my feet.

“What happened Jinora?” Dad asked quietly, his eyes soft and unaccusing. I only looked up at him, my mouth open, unable to form words to explain. 

“You heard something, didn’t you?” Korra asked, putting her hand on my shoulder. “Something that we couldn’t hear. And then you fell.” 

I nodded.

“We should all leave this island. Go to the Provinces. Figure out what’s going on.” Korra said.

“What about Mom? What about Ikki and Meelo and Rohan?” I asked, scared to leave them unprotected.

“They’ll be okay,” Dad said, kneeling next to me, but I wasn’t sure if he was trying to reassure himself or me. “They’re just sleeping, they’re not in any danger.” I thought about Ikki waking up tomorrow alone in our bed, if she woke up at all. What would she think? Hopefully, the snowwoman I made her would let her know I was safe.

If only the humming in the air would get quieter so I could clear my mind. No, I didn’t want to turn the radio dial, I wanted to think of a way to wake everyone up and make sure they were safe.

“Wait,” I said. “What if it’s not safe to leave. The bridge fell, I’m not sure the island wants us to leave.”

“We’ll take Oogi. Don’t worry, we’ll be fine in the air.” He said patiently. “This is our home. Aang built it. It will not hurt us.” I wanted to believe him.

If only there was a way we could check on them while we were gone, to watch over them to make sure they were safe, like a radio or something – the radio! It was calling me, somehow, for good or evil, I didn’t know, but I needed this mystery to be solved on this island, now, before we left my family alone and defenseless. 

I reached down and spun the dial with my fingers hovering over it, using the air from the ceiling, spinning it until it felt right to stop. It must have been twenty rotations, past any channel it was meant to receive, when the humming finally quieted, and was replaced with a whisper I felt deep in my sternum. 

My pointer finger was pulled by some force toward the dial where it stuck, like the moon pulling the tides, inevitable and even. My vision swam like I was looking at the note again. I eased my mind into the haze, resisting the urge to collapse and blackout. I felt my connection to the others stretch into thin fibers until I was sure I couldn’t take them with me.

Slowly, my vision focused again, but the colors didn’t make sense. Everything was too bright and too red. I was inside still, but no longer in the tomb, and I was alone.

Sunlight, not moonlight was drifting in through wide, square windows that were gridded like the ones in Asami’s warehouse, dispersed generously on the brick wall. Boxes covered in sheets were strewn about the floor. 

A door stood on the far wall, facing me. I started to walk toward it, then a shadow to my right caught my eye and I stopped. The boxes shifted around the shadow, breaking in on themselves, splinters cracking sharply and sending dust into the air. The splinters fell in an arrangement that looked almost like faces – but that couldn’t have been right. 

I froze, wanting to see what force was causing this but also afraid of what it could do to me. I stood my ground, flame in my hands and thought, come out creature of Amon, I’ll play nice if you tell me your secrets. 

I snapped back to the tomb, my finger pulsed where it had touched the radio dial, a blister forming. Those weren’t my thoughts that I heard, and that flame in my hand? That was not my spirit. 

“Jinora, I’ve got you,” Dad said, scooping me up before I fell on the cold ground again. I was barely aware of the room moving around me until Korra was above me too, catching the snow in her hair before it could fall to me. 

“I went somewhere just now.” I said, almost a question.

“Your body was frozen when you touched the radio. My guess is that your spirit was transported somewhere, perhaps through the radio signal.”

“That can happen? I’ve never heard of a radio doing that.” Korra said, probably trying to remember if Asami ever mentioned something like that in their lessons.

“That’s just my guess, but your spirit travelling somewhere without your body can happen,” he assured. “At least that’s what I’ve heard,” he added in an undertone.

“Have you done it Dad?” I asked.

“No,” he said, not meeting my eyes.

“Where did you go? What did you see?” Korra asked, ploughing on.

“I was in a warehouse like Asami’s, except much smaller, and there was a shadow breaking some boxes and I heard thoughts that didn’t feel like my own,” I paused, unable to put more to words.

Dad gripped me tighter. “You possessed someone else’s body?” 

“No, it didn’t feel like that,” I said, scared at the thought. “It felt more like I was in a dream. I couldn’t control my actions – or I guess the person’s actions.”

Dad and Korra exchanged a glance.

“Anything else?” He asked.

“I held fire in my hand,” I said. “And I was looking for Amon.” Only Korra reacted. 

“Mako,” she said quietly, then stood up, seeming to decide something. “Maybe he found his answers,” she said to no one in particular, then sat back down, confused.

“Mako’s not the only fire bender in the world,” Dad added, trying to appear reasonable.

The question we were all afraid to ask was why anyone was looking for Amon.

“Jinora, what do you think? Do you think that could have been Mako?” Dad asked me.

I knew it was, somehow, but I couldn’t explain that. “I think so, but wherever I – he – was, it wasn’t near here. The walls were brick, like in the Eastern Air Temple, and it was sunny, and it looked like a city, but not Republic City.”

“So he’s either far away-” Korra started.

“Or this was in the past.” Dad said, finishing her thought.

“Or both.” I said.

Korra grabbed my wrist and said firmly, “we need to go.”

The snow was turning to ice in the entrance to the tomb and would soon trap us in here, and something told me that Korra’s fire would not be able to free us.

We ran up the path, found Oogi, and climbed on his saddle.

“Will they be okay?” I asked, looking down at my house as we flew away from our island.

“They’ll be fine,” Dad said, hugging me close to him. “That ice was only following us, not them.”

I knew he was right but that didn’t stop the tears welling up in my eyes. I held onto him tighter even though I had never lost my balance riding on Oogi before.

“Besides, they have Pabu to look after them,” he nudged me. I laughed through the tightness in my throat.

“Where to?” Korra asked from her steering seat. She had volunteered to steer Oogi after seeing Dad had his hands full with me.

The question hung in the air whipping past us. Our minds were still at home, none of us were prepared for a journey. Being an air nomad hadn’t prepared Dad or I to abandon our family to save them like this. 

Dad finally offered an answer. “The Hu Xin Provinces.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading this! This is my first fanfic, so I very much appreciate all your kudos and comments, and if you have any suggestions or things you want to see, let me know!


	3. Chapter 3

As we flew along the water, none of us lied down for sleep. I suspected we were all too afraid of what we would see when we would wake up. 

Luckily, Korra had picked up the radio on our way out and was fiddling with it, trying to get a signal, or static, or something. A couple sparks flew out of it once, lighting up her face, reinvigorating her tinkering for a few minutes before she returned to her monotonous turning of the dial and digging through the insides with her short fingernails. Pabu wasn’t here to keep her calm. She had apparently picked up a lot from Asami.

I was feeling rattled, like my body wasn’t the only place my spirit had been, which should have made me felt freer, but it just made me feel more trapped than Dad ever could with a furrow of his eyebrows. 

It would’ve been one thing if I knew what I was doing, or at least had a teacher to guide me through this, but I only had myself, and that would have to be enough.

At some point Korra gave up the radio and plopped down next to me. She propped her arm on a bent knee and looked out to the moon. 

We sat in silence for a while until she nudged me with her elbow and whispered, “hey kid, nice going back at the island, you did something not even your dad could do.”

I grinned guiltily. Even though Korra was the Avatar, she didn’t intimidate me, but still I always appreciated her recognition. Her words made me feel less alone, like we were going through all of this together – even my spiritual fits.

“I didn’t do that much,” I said. “It was kind of like I was just doing something that someone wanted me to do.”

She leaned in. “Someone was making you do something?” She said with a hushed intensity.

“No, no one was making me do anything,” I decided. “But someone or something was giving me a nudge and I turned that dial because it felt like the natural thing to do.” I couldn’t get the words quite right, but that didn’t matter because Korra understood.

“Like a spirit,” Korra whispered. “You know, your dad knows a thing or two about spirits, maybe he can help us figure it out.” 

If only it were so easy. Dad knew well over two things about spirits, he’d studied them relentlessly for longer than I’d been alive, but he wouldn’t want to have a discussion with me about it.

Korra felt my hesitation. “He’s just worried about you.”

“You’re not.” I said, looking up at her.

“Hey. I’m just trying to stay afloat here. I’ve got no one else to worry about me and I can barely keep it together, not like you, you can handle anything.”

“Dad worries about you.” She didn’t understand how important she was to him.

I turned to look at the moon, in its same spot in the sky – which didn’t make sense. Shouldn’t it have moved a little by now? It had been a few hours since I first looked at it from my bedroom window, and it was like the night was frozen in place – or time.

Korra turned. “That’s funny,” she said. “The moon doesn’t look like it’s moved an inch, does it?” She asked. “Is it possible we’re all just a little fuzzy in the head?” Korra added when I didn’t respond, just looked back at her worried.

“We’re here.” Dad’s voice came heavily from Oogi’s helm.

We forgot the moon as we looked down at the city coming into view. The dark water below us was replaced with the many yellow, blue, and red lights of the city. The coastline was sprawling with the uniformly jagged rectangles of buildings, and the grid of the streets looked like the tiny tunnels of an ant farm. I could see why they called it “the Provinces”. The streets stretched for as far as I could see. Unlike Republic City, the Hu Xin Provinces weren’t restricted by an Avatar-made moat. I didn’t know how Dad expected us to find the building when there were hundreds that looked exactly like it.

We touched down on the sand next to the boardwalk and the same eerie silence filled the air here, too. The streets were empty of cars and we were the only people – and sky bison – outside. A few scattered windows were lit up with a yellow glow, but no sounds emanated from within any of the endless building’s walls, which were made of the same size bricks I saw in my episode at the tomb, but it was too dark to see if they were the same burnt red.

“So, this is where Mako’s been holing himself up,” Korra said, hands on her hips, her gaze high.

“The building Jinora saw wasn’t just any warehouse,” Dad said. “My guess is that something will pull people toward it, like a bison whistle, and only some people have ears young enough to hear it.” His bemused glance down at me warmed the air around my ears.

“That doesn’t make sense, how can a person hear a building?” Korra asked.

“Spirits don’t see sense the way that we humans do.” Dad explained like he was answering Ikki’s question for the hundredth time. “Jinora, there was something special that you saw in your vision, wasn’t there? Something reminiscent of the tomb that transported you.”

Something stirred in my memory. “The boxes that broke made shapes when they fell to the floor. The splinters made faces, like the ones carved in the ceiling of the tomb. And the air – I thought I was just hearing the humming from the tomb, but I think it was coming from the building.” I said.

Korra asked, “What humming?” She didn’t hear it? 

Dad ignored her. “You will have to keep your ears open, then,” he said. “Lead the way.”

A blush flooded my cheeks and I grinned wide, but as I turned away from Dad and toward the city streets in front of us, my smile quickly vanished as dread swam through me like koi fish, smooth and circular, through my limbs and down my spine.

The city looked even larger than it did in the sky. I couldn’t comprehend the amount of people that called this place a home. My home only had six permanent residents. This place seemed to get larger the deeper you looked into it, each street endlessly breaking up into more streets, alleyways sprouting up out of nowhere, and an underground just as intricately woven. 

Despite the empty streets, any faint humming sound would surely be swallowed up by the buildings that kept our gaze close, focused on the fifty square foot world of each block.

Finding the right building could take all night – however long that lasted – especially because we had to leave Oogi on the beach. He hated walking between buildings, even if Republic City allowed it, Oogi would sooner swallow a building whole and spit it out than let himself be cornered between them.

As I set off straight into the city, I strained my ears to hear anything besides Korra’s excited gasps and Dad’s deep breaths, but had no luck, so I walked at random, hoping whatever there was to find wanted me to find it.

Every now and then I turned a corner, just to mix things up. We cut across the streets, not bothering with crosswalks, or even sidewalks. I expected Dad to say something about this being a one-time thing, but the streets were too quiet and traffic safety was probably the last thing on his mind.

Eventually, after what felt like miles of walking, and resisting asking Dad to carry me, because I didn’t want my time being treated like an equal member of the team to wear off prematurely, I heard the eerie hum from the tomb. I pointed the adults toward the building whose bricks were almost vibrating out of the walls. They were about to walk in the building next door when I corrected them. It seemed I was the only one who heard the humming after all. 

Dad placed his knuckles on the door which creaked open at his touch, and he walked gingerly inside. I followed beside Korra. A radio was sitting on a stack of unbroken boxes in the middle of the wide room, moonlight making a spotlight for it through the windows. 

From the horrified looks on everyone’s faces, I could tell that I wasn’t the only person who could hear what was coming out of this radio.

The sound of inhuman screaming tore through the frigid night air to my ears. I would’ve collapsed if Korra hadn’t gripped onto my shoulder like a crow.

Korra and I were right about Mako being involved in this somehow. His garbled, tortured voice was shooting out of the radio in splintered fragments. He was screaming all our names and we were all stuck staring, wondering who or what could possibly be tearing those sounds from his throat.

Korra raised her arms as if to crumple the radio in on itself with metal bending, but from the look of frustration and confusion on her face, she must’ve not been able to. Dad put a hand on her shoulder. He was probably right that they shouldn’t try to tamper with it.

I ran to turn off the radio but the sounds didn’t stop. It continued as the faces composed of wood splinters swirled on the floor like a tornado, growing taller until it reached Dad’s height, the faces keeping their form then melting into limbs, a torso, and a head, solidifying into a terrifyingly accurate depiction in the dim lighting.

“Mako?” Korra whispered at the carved form, his face broken open into a screaming hiss, her voice barely audible over his mechanical scream.

I wanted to help him but Dad held me back with a tight grip on my shoulder. I wanted to stop his screaming even though I knew he wasn’t human, but I didn’t know if that was entirely true. The others stayed firmly planted around me, but I knew they could feel it too. It was too strong, and it didn’t have that same spiritual transport quality that the tomb did.

Dad stepped forward like he was sure his foot would slide if he didn’t place it exactly right, and started doing motions I’d only seen him do after our Sunday afternoon mediations, when he thought we had all run off to play hide and seek and scooter.

Korra joined in a second later, knowing exactly what he was doing, copying him perfectly. I stood back and watched, unable to help.

The sound of “Mako’s” screams was slightly drowned out by the air Korra and Dad were sending around the large room, but nothing else seemed to change except my vision was getting fuzzy. 

The wood splinter Mako seemed to grow an undulating aura that shimmered in the moonlight. Sometimes he almost looked like himself. I couldn’t trust my eyes but Korra’s strain of confusion across her face told me she was seeing something too. I didn’t know if that was Korra and Dad’s doing, that Mako was coming to life. The thought terrified me. 

As quickly as his screaming started, it ended and he seemed to snap into himself before us – the real Mako, not the wood carving imitation.

“Korra?” he asked, dazed and slumping with exhaustion. Korra ran forward a couple steps to catch him before his knees gave out.

“What happened?” Korra whispered. She was worried and awake.

“I-” he said. “I had to know – but I didn’t-” He looked like he was trying to find words that his mouth refused to form.

“We should leave,” Dad said, saving Mako from continuing. He shifted his eyes around the room, taking in the boxes covered in sheets and lack of dust.

Korra and Dad part-led-part-dragged Mako the five steps toward the door then stepped outside into the moonlit street. I followed. I looked back at the space where the radio was and then forward at the back of Mako’s slumping head. 

I stepped out of the warehouse, my foot slicing cleanly through where the ground should have been but was replaced with the sky above the Hu Xin Provinces. 

I fell away from the warehouse doorstep, my arms flailing, trying to grasp onto the air, bend it, anything to get a grasp on where I was or what was happening to me. I fell until the feeling of my gravity was the only feeling I could remember ever having – and then suddenly but with no crash, I was sitting on Oogi again, next to Korra, looking out at the moon. 

Its position hadn’t changed in the sky even though we had surely taken at least an hour to find the warehouse. And then I remembered that the moon was stuck. Dad told me his uncle Sokka once knew the moon. That was when Ikki was a baby and I heard everything Dad said like it was a lesson he might never share again, so I had to hold onto it to make sense of later. 

I couldn’t see how anyone could know this moon, though, not with how cold it looked, smaller than a snowflake and just as transient, because the next moment it was gone, replaced by the streetlamp above the bookstore we walked by on the way to finding the warehouse.

Korra was still next to me but standing now, walking on ground that didn’t accept her stride. Her feet cycled underneath her, walking her body in place. 

I wondered if I looked as ridiculous, so I looked at my feet to see if the street was underneath them, propelling them forward, but what I saw didn’t make sense. 

The gray of the ground wasn’t bright and tinged yellow from the streetlamp, it was illuminated only by the moon, as if all the lamps in the city suddenly went out. 

I looked up at Korra to see my own look of confusion reflected at me, the shadowed walls of the tomb, not the city street, behind her, dark snowflakes speckling the stream of light coming in from the same far away moon.

I looked up at Korra who had stopped walking. I looked down at my feet to see they had stopped walking, too. 

Our breath turned to fog between us in the freezing air, then it started to spin in a whirlpool, gradually falling up toward the ceiling, like something was pulling it.

Soon our breath wasn’t the only thing being pulled toward the ceiling. 

A round face with a plump mouth, wide open in surprise, eyes all pupil and thickly outlined spun me upwards toward it with a whirlpool of air. The humming thickened in my ears until I heard my own name. I fell upwards, sure I would crash into the heavy stone with a thud, and the longer I fell, the surer I was the crash would come, but it never did.

My face molded with the stone’s face and I remembered Dad’s stories of the spirit Koh – the face stealer – and I wondered if this is where my face would end up, forever carved into my island, into the earth beneath my home. 

Had I seen that face during my first visit to the tomb, and had it looked like my own reflection then? The thought calmed me – it wouldn’t be so bad to be part of my home like this, always singing, I could live with that. I longed for space to lie still, for the peace that came with being made of stone.

I felt the cold rock permeate through my skin to the roots of my hair, through my skull, but when I opened my eyes, it wasn’t the tomb floor I was looking down on, it was the sky above Oogi, and I was falling through it again, the moon lighting my path down, or up, or sideways through the cold air, until I wasn’t falling anymore. 

I was sitting on Oogi again, but something was scorching me, burning through my clothes to where my skin would surely sear off. I looked up to see arms holding me in place and I saw they were Dad’s arms.

He looked at me like I was evaporating and he couldn’t keep me in one piece anymore, and then we were both falling – first through the air, then through solid stone – until finally, we slowed down, momentum lessening its reins on us and we emerged from the street outside the warehouse like popsicles pulled from their molds a little too early. 

My body reversed its steps back inside the warehouse, and then we were all inside – Korra, Dad, and Mako – standing still, feet planted on solid ground, breathing in air we could finally trust.

I looked up at the faces of the adults wondering if we had all just experienced the same thing. I briefly wondered if I was dead.

Everyone looked around the room and plopped, disoriented and exhausted to the floor. Everyone except Mako who was looking at us strangely.

Dad scooped me up in his arms and whispered “you’re okay” into my hair until I heard him believe it.

“What was that?” Korra asked Dad. He knew the most about spirits, and that had to have been the work of one.

He didn’t answer for a while. I unpeeled my face from his chest and looked up at him to see he was looking worriedly at me. “I think Jinora knows better than me,” he said, no note of accusation in his voice, but I still felt the sting of being caught doing something I shouldn’t have been doing. 

He’s right, I thought, but I didn’t know why until I heard myself answer. “That’s not Mako,” I said evenly, looking at the shimmering imitation staring piercingly at me, almost smiling, but not quite. 

“You have something he wants,” I said to Korra, whose perplexed expression slowly melted into one of understanding. She pulled Bolin’s letter from her sleeve along with the radio, which sparked in approval before it flew from her hand along with the letter to the fake Mako’s wooden hands.

“Thank you Jinora,” said Mako’s voice robotically. “You are allowed one question.”

When I didn’t speak, he chuckled and said, “by all means, talk it over with you group, there’s no rush.” I looked for a hint of a trick in his eyes, that this was a trap somehow, but I couldn’t find one. He either didn’t expect me to figure out his game, or he was sure that I would.

I looked at Dad. “It’s okay,” he said, a little too encouragingly. He patted my shoulder and said nothing else. I looked across at Korra who smiled at me like Mom did when she was giving me a new book.

Then I looked up at the Mako impersonator, who was cycling between carved wooden form and human form. Every flicker of moonlight being swallowed for the obscene transformation. His human smile was just as lifeless as his wooden one. 

I wanted to ask what he was doing to Dad, Korra, and me, why he was here, why time seemed to be standing still. Instead, I heard myself ask, “is Ikki okay?”


End file.
